Coronation Street Wiki:Manual of style
The is designed to be a rough guide to how to write articles for Corriepedia. If you're new to Wikia editing in general, you might want to look at page first for a beginner's guide. Rules of engagement It is felt that Corriepedia will be most efficient if it is consistent and uniform. Wikipedia has its own here, but there are some important differences between formatting styles here and there. Note that this is not a complete list, and suggestions are welcome. All articles must conform to the rules set below and other precedents set on the site. Any which do not can and will be deleted without notice. All edits must have an edit summary added which states why the page has been changed. Two exceptions are the addition of a new category and the edit of a talk page. Any editors who do no adhere to this rule will, after several reminders, have their access blocked. The edit summary should, as a basic requirement, state the source of the information where such information is added or amended e.g. "DOB given in episode 9445". Note: due to previous experiences, Wikipedia is not deemed to be a reliable source on this site. Any questions regarding such data should be referred to the administrators who will aim to check the official record. Articles When creating a new page, the following conventions should be observed. Episode titles *''Coronation Street'' episodes do not have titles, so they are listed according to episode number and date they were first broadcast in the United Kingdom. For example Episode 8 (4th January 1961). Both episode number and date are needed as occasionally two episodes of the show are broadcast on the same day, and there are two Episode 5999s. *Spin-off productions, including episodes of Pardon the Expression, usually have individual titles so articles should be named accordingly. Cast listings *Cast listings on episode pages should follow the order used in the transmitted episode(s). On the occasions in the 1960s when no cast credits were listed, the order should be - in order of preference - 1) the order of the corresponding episode that week; 2) if that isn't available, the convention used at the time for ordering - usually order of house in the street, 3) appearance order; or 4) TV Times order. *In recognition of the fact that the section heading is "Regular Cast" rather than "Regular Characters" only those members of the cast deemed to be under a regular long-term contract at any point in their time in the programme appear in this section. All other cast members are guest casts. Thus, Blanche Hunt as played by Patricia Cutts is a guest cast member, whereas Blanche as played by Maggie Jones is a regular cast member, even in those years when she made few appearances. One noted exception is Wendy Jane Walker's appearances as Susan Barlow prior to the 1970s to tie in with the guest appearances of the various actors of the time playing Peter Barlow. *Uncredited cast members should be listed at the very end of any cast listing and not inserted within the main body of the list. *Non-speaking extra characters, either walk-ons or actors, should not be listed, unless they were sourced from TV Times. Extras who are recognisable future cast members (such as Liz Dawn and Bill Tarmey) should be referenced in the notes section. They should never be deemed to be appearing as their future regular character as this was clearly not the intention at the time. *Notes which reference first and last appearances should only reflect regular cast members and guest cast who have a separate "List of appearances" page already created. Gaps in appearances should reflect regular cast members only and be referenced when they are three calendar months or more of duration. Exceptions are allowed when the absence was due to a reason which affected production e.g. unexpected illness which forced a rewrite, or there was some other notable reason which caused the gap e.g. a regular cast member taking a short time off from the programme to appear in another production, as these are historically significant. Character's names and articles *If both known, characters' first names and surnames should be included in the title (no middle names). Exceptions are if the character is credited on-screen using a shortened form of their first name or a nickname (for example, Norman Watts is listed under Curly Watts). Likewise, articles on actors or production crew, or any individual, are listed under the name for which they receive on-screen credit. *For characters who changed their surnames through marriage, their most recent credited surname takes precedence. Redirect pages can be created for previous surnames. *Both first name and surname should be capitalised. *If characters are only given one name, such as a first name, the article title should be given a qualifier to differentiate it from articles on people with the same name. Possible examples include John (Episode 3135) and Lucy (Rovers customer). If the character's name is not known at all and they are credited by their occupation or something else, a similar convention should be observed, for example Police Officer (Amy Searles) or Woman (Episodes 1436/7). The name as it appears on episode pages (through the use of pipelinks) should reflect that shown on the end credits. *Titles (e.g. Mr, Mrs, Dr) are only used when a first name or surname, or neither, are known. *Unseen characters can only be created once a name exists for them. On-screen characters that have no known name should be created as per the end-credits of the episode unless a name is given in dialogue in the episode. Character names given on actor's CV's cannot be used as they have no official provenance. *Details about characters must be sourced and the source named in the edit summary when making the change. Guesses, estimates or unauthorised sources are not allowed. For the purposes of this site, Wikipedia is deemed to be an unreliable source as changes can be made to their pages which are not fully monitored and can be inaccurate. *Guest character pages should be limited to one photograph of the character (unless played by more than one actor, no sectioning and no table of contents. Deviations to this should be agreed upfront and should only be for guest characters who are fully named, appeared in more than one storyline, and have had at least thirty appearances. *Character pages should only be created if there is something substantive to say about the person concerned, either from the programme or related books. A named relative with no link to another character other than being a relative isn't reason to create the page. *A character's residence should reflect the main residence that they were legally residing in at the time. i.e. any residence at which it is supposed that the character was registered to vote, or had their banking or other legal documentation registered to. This means stays in hospital are excluded whereas a long-term stay in prison, or time away in the armed services is included. The latter should not be included in the "Who lives where" section of the year pages. Any character staying for a matter of days in someone else's house should not have their residence amended. Any doubts should be addressed and discussed on a forum talk page before amending any pages on the site. Other *Article names should be in singular form (unless there is none). *For article titles with more than one word, only the first word and proper nouns should be capitalised. Perspective There are two ways to write a content page: in-universe and out-of-universe. The difference between these depends on the subject of the article; if it exists in the fictional world depicted in Coronation Street then it should be in-universe, otherwise it is out-of-universe. Although Coronation Street is set in the fictional Weatherfield, it is grounded in the real world and so many real places and people have been referred to in the show over the years. These articles should be written in-universe with a subsection containing any relevant real life information. In-universe When writing an in-universe article the subject material should be treated as real (even though it obviously isn't). For example, the Ken Barlow article begins Ken Barlow is a longtime resident of Coronation Street, not Ken Barlow is the longest running ''Coronation Street character''. Although these articles will contain some behind-the-scenes information, this should be under a heading such as 'behind the scenes' or another if there are a lot of supplementary out-of-universe details, and such a section should be written out-of-universe. Pages written in-universe include those on the characters, places and businesses seen in the show and the plot sections of episode articles. Out-of-universe This is when an article is written from a real-world perspective, and acknowledges that the show is fictional. When writing an article from this perspective, editors should use the Real World template to mark the page as out-of-universe. Pages written this way include those on production staff and overall articles on Coronation Street and the making of it. Retconning Retconning is defined as "revise (an aspect of a fictional work) retrospectively, typically by introducing a piece of new information that imposes a different interpretation on previously described events". This is not allowed on this site unless it has been specifically addressed within the narrative of the programme (such as Mrs Bates in January 1972 who was confirmed several months later as being the same character as Rita Littlewood, who had previously appeared in December 1964) or ITV make a statement of such intent. Coincidences of names or places can be given in notes but with no inference of connection. An example of the latter is the note concerning Sylvia Ogden for Episode 293 (2nd October 1963). Page layout Some categories of article differ, but most follow this basic layout: #Content #Behind the scenes #See also #External links #Categories All articles should belong to at least one category and all articles should have content. The other sections are not necessary, but if they are included, they should be in that order. Distinct content and behind the scenes sections should only be included in articles written in-universe, otherwise they are the same thing. The content section should not use a Content heading. Longer articles should have several headings and subheadings in the content section to make for better reading, but smaller articles should not have any heading for the content. For more information on how specific types of pages should be laid out, see the following: *Template:Character *Template:Episode Grammar and spelling Although Wikipedia conforms to American English, Corriepedia articles should be written in English English, mainly because Coronation Street is made and first broadcast in the United Kingdom where that variety of English is the most common, and is used by the characters in the show (usually). Sometimes speakers of other varieties of English may edit pages other than in English-English, and for uniformity it is preferred if these pages are edited to conform to the standard of this wikia. Dates Calendar dates are written e.g. 9th December. This is the most common way of dating in the UK. Pages which detail real-life events by date should only list those involving regular cast members, production staff and major production events in the programme's history. Exceptions should be discussed on the talk page first but admins' decisions on these matter are final and binding. Tense As a rule of thumb, in-universe articles should be written in past tense, because from an outside perspective, all events depicted in Coronation Street episodes are history once the episode is broadcast in the UK. However, there are exceptions. The series, and Corriepedia, are rooted in the present day, so anything that is still true as of the most recent episode should be in present tense. For example, The Rovers Return Inn is owned by Johnny Connor. The remaining text of character article should be in past tense. Out-of-universe articles should also follow this rule. Examples of sections written in present tense are events described in calendar date pages and episode plot synopses. Episode articles contain a mixture of present and past tense. Plots are written in present tense, as are any notes relating to the content (including credits) of the episode, while notes relating to the production of the episode should be in past tense. Other *Links to other episodes within pages should not be in italics or inside inverted commas, as the article titles here are not proper episode titles. *Note Coronation Street and Coronation Street, the first of which links to the article on the series itself and is in italics, and the second of which links to the article on the fictional street and is not in italics. *Be aware that articles which exist on Wikipedia will not necessarily be created on this Wikia, even if they are mentioned in an article here. An article should only be created on Coronation Street Wiki if the topic is relevant to Coronation Street. If it is deemed useful to give a reader access to more information on something, it is preferable to link directly to the article on Wikipedia. *Place names should only ever be linked to, and pages created for, places which are specifically referred to in episode synopsis or character pages. No place name should be linked to solely from actor or production staff pages. Headings Headings should be used within longer articles to make for easier reading. Main headings should be bracketed by double equal signs. Subheadings should be bracketed by triple equal signs. *Similar to the naming conventions of article pages, headings should only have the first word and proper nouns capitalised. *Beware of too many headings for too little information. It is messy and makes the article look like a stub. Maintenance As well as creating the backlog of pages from over fifty years of broadcasting, Corriepedia also depends on the maintenance of pages related to newer episodes to ensure that its goals of being comprehensive and accurate are achieved. This means that a regular routine has been established whereby certain users have adopted the tasks of updating certain pages on a timetable-driven basis. These are new episode pages (ideally created before the next transmission day of episode(s) are broadcast), list of episode appearances for characters plus the number of episodes they appeared in on their character page, Top 100 appearances, character appearances table in the year guides and List of longest running characters. The latter is updated at the end of each month by user jtomlin1uk. The 2nd, 3rd and 4th items are updated as close as possible to half-way through the month and at month end by user Karen 2310. This has in the past ensured the aforementioned accuracy and no other user should update the data on these pages without contacting the above editors though obvious errors may be corrected. As a convention, editors are expected to write their own pages and not start off work for others to complete. If for any reason articles are left unfinished, an appropriate maintenance tag should be added to the page or section, and the article placed in the relevant category. A list of maintenance tags can be found at Coronation Street Wiki:Templates. Categories All categories on Corriepedia are well established and no additions are required unless agreed by consensus. No new categories should be created unless they have first been discussed on the forum pages. Exceptions are categories for pages relevant for a new year in which the programmes is broadcast e.g. "2015 minor characters". Family name categories are for the linking of four or more characters only once those pages have been created and not in anticipation. Photographs and galleries Whilst it is recognised that some pages will be without images, either due to the nature of the page, or lack of access to archives, it is desirable that all pages have at least one image to support them. These images must be relevant to the article and provide, through their subject matter, a new perspective on each article e.g. several solo shots of characters on their main pages are not required. The main image should be a solo shot but the others must show them in interaction with other characters, or at critical points in their storylines, or to illustrate the passing of years of those characters. All episode images must be screen shots and imitate the aspect ratio in which they were first broadcast. Images which do not meet these requirements are allowed until access to a better image occurs. Screenshots are preferred for the main character images and, where possible, these should be in colour. For current characters, images should be of their most recent appearance, to include changes of hairstyle, beards etc. For former characters, the image should reflect the way they were most often presented on screen e.g. Ena Sharples's main image should show her hairnet All other images can be either publicity pictures or screenshots except for the List of Appearances pages which must be screenshots Galleries of images should be limited to the list of appearance pages and select others where several images are required e.g. VHS and DVD releases of Coronation Street. Videos Although wikia functionality allows for the posting of videos, the administrators have decided that none shall be allowed on this site for copyright reasons. All videos posted will be deleted, irrespective of their source. Trivia Sections Trivia sections on pages are barred on this site. Information should be contained in the body of the main text, or as background information. Deletions and blocking We welcome contributions from new users on this site and from returning editors but do not deem it unreasonable to expect a high standard from those individuals. The site has now been in existence for long enough, and has enough content, for editors to know the look and feel of the site and the expectations that we place on them. We are delighted to enter into any discussion with them on talk pages and answer any questions they may have about what they want to add to the site. We also expect a high standard of written English as we do not have time to edit, correct and amend pages while also trying to make out our contributions. Therefore, any contribution which contains five or more English errors will result in deletion of the page and the user being blocked. Administrators The administrators of this site reserve the right to amend these rules or formulate deviations to these rules, including on an exception basis, at any time and without consultation. Any editor who participates in an "edit war" with an administrator, and/or reverses any changes they make, will be considered for automatic blocking without prior notice. Category:Organisation